shootings in Dallas

At least four police officers are dead, with a total of eleven officers shot, after rooftop snipers in Dallas targeted law-enforcement agents who had been tasked with watching over a Black Lives Matter march and rally—itself a response to the recent shooting deaths of at least two black men who had been killed by police while unarmed, and whose deaths had been recorded on cell-phone video. A bomb may also be involved. From what I just heard, three of the Dallas shooters have been apprehended, and a fourth is exchanging gunfire with police. Scuttlebutt is that, among the apprehended gunmen, one or more ominously noted that "there are more of us" at large. One African-American gentleman, whose image had been tweeted by the Dallas police as a suspect, turned himself in. It turned out his rifle was unloaded, and he had turned himself in specifically to distance himself from the shooting and to declare his innocence. He had been part of the march/rally, exercising his Texan open-carry rights.

It's far too early to say much more than what I've said. A Washington Post article is here, but do keep checking for updates. It makes me angry to see dark commentary, over at sites like Instapundit, already implicating supposedly armed, incensed black men for the shooting. (The Drudge Report recently slapped up the scare-inducing, race-baiting headline "Black Lives Kill.") Do we even know the ethnic background of the apprehended shooters? As of this writing, I've seen nothing (although I'm sure we'll know more soon). All I can say is that, based on what little we know, it takes training and discipline for a group of snipers to take up rooftop positions and fire on presumably armored police officers, hitting eleven and killing at least four. The snipers would have had to know that a march was going to happen; to take up the rooftop positions that they did, they would have had to know the march's route and the police's positions along that route. I tentatively conclude, then, that this is no ordinary mass shooting: police officers were specifically targeted; at least four highly trained men acted in concert; the shooting took place at fairly long range.

So before wild-eyed speculators start screeching "Black!" or "Muslim!", it's probably a good idea to sit back and wait for this torrent of information to settle down and organize itself.


_